Tributes to dismembered, boiled transgender woman

October 9, 2014 /
Pahichan Reporter

pahichan/October 9- A young transgender cabaret performer has been revealed as the woman murdered, dismembered, then boiled in a chemical stew, reportedly by her boyfriend, in a Brisbane, Australia, apartment. Police discovered severed body parts of Mayang Prasetyo, 27, cooking in chemicals on the stove of the ground floor apartment she shared with partner Marcus Volke in riverside Teneriffe on Saturday night. They had responded to requests for a welfare check after residents reported a “rotting meat” like stench emanating from the unit.

Volke, 28, who is believed to be responsible for his Indonesian girlfriend’s horrific death, fled the apartment by jumping a rear fence into a laneway and evaded police by seeking refuge in a wheelie bin. While inside, he is alleged to have used a knife to end his own life. A former schoolmate of Volke’s in the regional Victorian city of Ballarat said the young chef had a dark side and “an intense gaze”.

“He was a good guy, he was a bit up and down, he could lose his temper like anyone can but for the most part he was just like anyone else. He was just one of the boys,” the one-time friend said. “He was always a little different. “He wasn’t a happy go lucky guy like the rest of us, he was a bit dark.” Marcus Volke was ‘a bit dark’, a friend said. Supplied Marcus Volke was ‘a bit dark’, a friend said. Volke met Prasetyo while both worked for an international cruise ship company and moved into their apartment in the recently completed Double One 3 complex in Commercial Road just weeks ago.

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Police are yet to officially confirm Prasetyos’ identity but friends took to social media on Monday to express their grief over the loss of a young woman one described as “always such a happy, cheerful person”. “Rip beautiful, the world will not be the same without you … I will miss you so much I couldn’t possibly express it in words. I still remember the day I met you and the impression you made on me. Nobody that met you could ever forget you. This really doesn’t seem real…” Sparks posted on her Facebook page. Another friend, Brett Whitehouse, said the “world is less full of the spark with which you shared”.

“Rest in Peace in the stars from where you came my dear friend. Most amazing soul I have ever met,” he wrote. Prasetyo appeared to have died several days before police knocked on the couple’s apartment door on Saturday night and made the most gruesome of discoveries. Police are treating the deaths as a murder-suicide. Like many young couples in large inner-city apartment complexes the pair kept largely to themselves.

It was a way of life that would enable Volke’s grisly crime to be concealed for almost a week. Until police arrived on Saturday no-one in the building had noticed the woman neighbours described as “stunning” was even missing. What they had noticed was an increasingly unbearable smell described as like “rotting meat”, which unbeknown to themwas emanating from the couple’s apartment.It’s a thought that does not sit comfortably with Courtney Reichart, a fellow resident of the apartment complex in leafy Teneriffe.

“That poor girl has sat there for however many days and we’ve just been walking past, living our lives, and thinking ‘what’s that smell?'” she said. Detectives are still trying to establish what prompted the young chef to kill his 27-year-old girlfriend, cut her into pieces and boil her severed body parts in chemicals. The same mystery confronts his family in Ballarat, where the young chef grew up, who appear equally perplexed by the gruesome crime.

His mother Dorothy Volke confirmed it was her son who had died in the tragedy but said he gave no hint there was anything amiss the last time she spoke with him. She said he had told them of his Indonesian girlfriend but that she and her husband were yet to meet her. “I’m not sure what he was doing – last we knew he was working on boats,” she told the ABC. In an ironic twist, one of two Facebook pages Volke maintained revealed him to be an outspoken opponent of violence against women as well a staunch advocate for ending animal cruelty.

Police and forensic investigators concluded their examination of the two crime scenes in Teneriffe about midday on Monday, leaving residents to come to grips with the horrors that unfolded behind closed doors without them even knowing. “I only met her a couple of times and that was only a quick hello and to pat the dog,” Courtney Reichart said.”They seemed quite friendly, they didn’t seem like they had any issues, but it was a quick meet and greet.”

There is not a uniform understanding among ordinary people about homosexual, transgender, inter-sex and bi-sexual people. Even the people who know about variance in this community address saying female, male and transgender. They, however, do not have proper knowledge that transgender have two categories: transgender woman and transgender man.
In this situation, it is not an easy task to inform society about their rights. Even the media and society did not have a positive attitude towards sexual and gender minority such as homosexual, transgender, inter-sex and bi-sexual people. National media had... Read more